Sneak Peek

Here's a low-res preview of what our eventual logo will look like. Isn't it lovely? I'm so glad that Alicia and I both liked the same design. It was funny how the elements came together. I suggested STAR as an acronym of our initials. Alicia came up with the idea of a shooting star and quite rightly wanted a feeling of motion in the image. We both love purple so that choice was easy. And our wickedly talented graphic designer found a font that's both publish-y and contemporary. I love it when bits and pieces merge into a greater whole.

I thought I would talk a little about branding today and the graphic branding process because this is something that affects authors, too. If you're building a website or blog, you'll be confronted by decisions that are similar to the ones we've addressed in the last two weeks. In fact, only this week a friend with an established web presence emailed me a mockup of her new business cards with a request for feedback. Even with the foundation established, even with a beautiful website already in place, she still had to think about how her business cards tie into her brand and which graphics and details to include.

So, here is what we were thinking when we came up with our ideas, and here are some ways that ymmv.


The Name

Sample conversation that occurred over and over for months:

A: What should we call it?
T: Uhh...
(crickets)
T: What should we call it?
A: Hmm...
(crickets)

Occasionally, one of us would email a list of keywords or ideas to the other. And that would lead to a lot more Uhhing and Hmming and an occasional check to see if we could get a domain name for any of the options under consideration. It was very frustrating at the time because it felt as though the perfect name was just beyond our grasp. We had a relatively easy time coming up with a number of other central concepts like the eventual format for the books themselves. (Oddly enough, that format ties in very neatly to the name and logo, but that's a story for another day.)

At one point, we sat at my dining room table with dueling computers -- my laptop set up to mine a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary and other word tools, and hers to search the availability of domain names. I tried living with a couple of our ideas for a few days at a stretch to see if they would grow on me. They never did, so it's probably lucky that we couldn't get the domains.

Some of you might remember a few weeks (months?) ago, there was a brief gigglefest in the comments here about our initials being T&A. That got me thinking. Yes, blame yourselves, Team Comments, for the name STAR Guides. You made me think about our initials.

And as soon as I thought of it, I got a little sizzle inside. You know that feeling when your instinct knows it's right? But I sat on the idea for a couple of days before I sent it to Alicia. I wanted to be sure the sizzle wouldn't fade, and luckily, she liked the idea, too.

With the name STAR, several other things snapped into focus. We knew we would have a star graphic on our logo, a no-brainer, and we easily drifted to the name STAR Guides. Each book in the initial series will focus on a fiction topic, and will be named accordingly: The STAR Guide to Narrative Elements, The STAR Guide to Slush Survival, The STAR Guide to Openings, and so on.

Your pen name might function much the same way. It's your name brand. It should serve as a strong starting point for your other branding efforts -- your website, your blog, your facebook page, and so on. One key difference, of course, is that human names don't usually come with built-in thematic branding potential. Unless you choose a name that's also an English word with strong connotations (Rule, Dare, Tower, Moor, Quick, etc.), you're probably dealing more with mood and tone than with actual meanings. (Crusie, for example, is a name that just sounds like fun.) Or you're in a position where you have to build associations between your name and your brand. (Rockefeller, for example, didn't start off with the connotation of wealth, but built it over time and through circumstances.)


Color

Alicia and I both favor purple, so it was really easy to choose that as our base color. But more than that, it works. Purple is the color of creativity, or so my feng shui expert told me. It's bold enough to stand out on the spines of books on crowded shelves, but not so bold as to be overwhelming. I also think it has a playful edge, but it's playful without being juvenile. I think that's good and suits our purposes. Adults should be able to have fun with their writing yet still remain adults.

We thought at first about doing purple with white, which would clean but not high-contrast. And then we started thinking about cream or a soft yellow, which would still be soft but would give more contrast than plain white. And then our designer came up with the golden highlights, and it was all over. It's bolder than what we originally planned to do, but that design absolutely leaped off the mock sheet. I fell in love at first sight (again with that sizzle, the same feeling I get when reading something really special in the slush pile), and Alicia preferred it, too.

I guess the lesson in this is to choose a color that speaks to you and to your purpose in more than one way, but be open to ways to vary it. If we had stuck to our original intent of doing something soft and clean and lower contrast, we never would have seen this gorgeous star. Big shout out to our designer for coming up with that.


The Designer

I want to take a minute to talk about why we chose this particular designer to do our logo. I know lots of people who can do graphic design, and so does Alicia. But our designer is the creative director for an ad agency, with loads of experience with branding through images. She's incredibly sensitive to color and layout, and I've never yet seen a design from her for anything that read cluttered or busy, even when there was some detail in the design.

We wanted a design that was clean and strong -- something that would read at a glance even when reduced to the size of a spine logo. Not only did our designer "get" what we were looking for, she came up with dozens of ideas to make our original concepts even better. She thought of things we never would have thought of on our own. She made us look at black and white mockups, something which puzzled me initially but made incredible sense as the process unfolded. All in all, her work ethic and results proved repeatedly that she's the right one for the job. I genuinely believe we got a better logo in the end because we worked with this particular designer.

When you're choosing a graphic designer, look at lots of samples of their work first. Is this someone with a strong design sensibility, common traits that come up over and over again in the work? Do all the designs read feminine or masculine, or do they all use dark colors, or are there other similarities? If so, that might be what you get. All the various cover artists I've worked with over the years have definite design sensibilities -- some are whizzes with fonts, some are adept at complex layouts, some do cool things with shading and fades to control the movement of the viewer's eyes across the images. Learn to see these things, and decide which elements work best for you before you hire your designer.

A word about web design and graphic design: They're not the same thing. Don't assume that someone with mad web skillz can deliver suitable graphics. Maybe they can, and maybe they can't. We're talking about very different skill sets, although there is some overlap in areas like layout and color work. But before you assume you can hire a web designer and get a good graphic designer in the bargain, ask a lot of questions about where the graphics came from. You might be surprised to learn that some professional web designers sub out their important graphics work. They are willing to do basic stuff themselves, but the important things (like logo builds), they leave to the experts.


My mind is much occupied these days with these sorts of business issues, but I think it's worth blogging about them even if they're not as much fun as character and pov and plot.

Theresa

More on Business Details

Continuing with JT's questions regarding business matters, today we'll talk about some other things you might want in your author's toolkit. She specifically asked about letterhead, credit cards, and websites.

Letterhead

Why do you need it? Very little business is done via snail mail these days. If you suspect you might need letterhead, you might simply invest in a box of good cotton or linen bond. You already have a good quality printer, right? It's easy enough to print your own letterhead onto good paper if your printer is capable of handling the job. Word processing software gives you lots of options for designing on the page. You can change font and type size. You can lay the text on the page in a particular place. You can incorporate a logo, lines, and other design features, all without anything fancier than what comes in your program.

If you have a good color laser printer or a photo-quality inkjet printer, you might even use the graphics from your website as part of your letterhead. Check the dimensions of your artwork files to make sure they'll fit on the page. You can easily re-size artwork using the standard MSPaint program that comes on most PCs. Just open the artwork in the program, click the Image tab, and select Resize/Skew. Under this same tab, you can choose Attributes to learn the dimensions of the file. Or, if you prefer, you can ask your artist to re-size them for you. If you're trying to enlarge, this might be the better option because MSPaint gives a better result with shrinking and cropping than with enlarging. That's been my experience, anyway.


Credit Cards

Do you need a credit card in your pen name? Probably not. Eventually, you may get to the point where your writing income is high enough to justify incorporation. At that point, you can use your pen name as your corporate name and set up all kinds of bank and credit accounts, get an FEIN, etc.

In the meantime, check your state's rules on DBAs. DBA (which stands for "Doing Business As") standing might be enough to allow you to apply for credit cards in your pen name. This varies a lot from state to state, though, so I can't really offer more insight than to point out that it might be an option. Your local banker should be able to give you more information on this.

For most writers, a garden variety checking account will be a perfectly workable solution. Set up a dedicated account for your writing income. It can be in your own name. Record-keeping is very important for freelance income earners, so you can use your check register to record every penny earned and expended. Many banks provide debit cards or credit cards to account holders, and these cards will frequently suffice for most of your needs.

When will you know it's time to incorporate? Your agent or accountant will probably let you know, but a good rule of thumb is that if you need an employee, you need to incorporate. But even without employees, when your income gets large, you might want to incorporate to take advantage of tax and other benefits. Again, this is something that will vary a lot from state to state. Check with your accountant for more specific information.


Website

You need a website if you want an easy way for people to find more information about you. If you want to be a mysterious recluse, you get to skip it. But then you also get to worry about whether you're hurting your sales, alienating your readers, and setting yourself up to need a second job when you're 70.

It's easy enough to build a web presence even without a formal website. Take this blog, for example. I asked my good friend Red to design us a banner and avatar. We signed up for a free account, and we did most of the link-building and design work (such as it is) ourselves. If you want something spiffier than a blogspot blog, you can use wordpress, which is a bit harder to learn but gives you many more layout and format options. You can set up your blog to look like a standard website by only allowing the newest post to appear on the front page, and then using the post links to act like links to new releases, backlist, and so forth.

If you want to spring for a domain and standard site -- and when you start to rack up releases, you might want to do exactly that -- you'll need a couple of things like a domain name, a basic working knowledge of html, maybe a wysiwig editor like Frontpage or Dreamweaver, some graphics, and so on. You might want to hire a web designer to create your website, or you might want to do it yourself. Websites run from a few hundred to many thousands, and reputable web designers will quote prices for you. Remember to keep records of all these expenses for your taxes and accounting.

Consider other free options, too, like your publisher's website and blog, facebook profiles and fan pages (which can be made fully find-able by search engines), twitter, myspace, and so on. See if you can get added into the rotation on an existing group blog, which will be less work overall but will still help you reach readers.

For more ideas on branding and web design, take a look at some of our past posts on PR. And I'm sure our commenters can offer more ideas on this topic. Most people start out baffled by business and PR requirements, but it's easy enough to learn. Time, dedication, a good network, and maybe a little cash are all you need.

Business Cards and Other Trappings

JT sent us an email with a whole slew of business-related questions. We're going to take her questions in stages, starting with one about business cards. (Don't forget -- you can email us at edittorrent@ gmail dot com with questions, or just post them in the comments.)

So, let's start with the basic proposition that writers don't use business cards the same way that, for example, an attorney or salesman would use them. In those professions, business cards are used to try to connect with new clients. Basic contact information is included, maybe a logo, and that's it. The professional hands out hundreds of cards over the course of a year. Every new encounter is a chance for a new business connection.

Authors can use business cards in the same way to promote new releases or backlist. Wherever you go, you meet potential new fans, and passing out a little reminder in the form of a business card is probably a cheap and easy way to promote your books. Bookmarks might be a bit more friendly, but it won't hurt to have business cards with your pen name and releases listed, your website url, your twitter or facebook profiles, and that sort of thing. You can select graphics that build your brand, and you can use the front and back side of the card to include more graphics or blurbs.

But you wouldn't want to hand out your phone number to strangers in the checkout line, would you? So in that case, you might leave off some of your contact information, just for privacy's sake.

And in that case, the card won't do you much good at an industry conference. When you're at a conference and you hand your card to an agent or editor, we want it to have contact information. In fact, it's the main thing we want, plus something that will help us remember you when we're thinking back over the hundreds of people we met. I frequently jot notes on the backs of business cards indicating where I met the author, who introduced us, hair color, details of the conversation, anything that might trigger my memory when I pick up the card later.

Notice that I do actually make use of these cards. I know some folks will toss them after the conference, but I tend to keep them. Not always, though. The ones I toss are the ones from casual encounters (not pitches or other formal meetings) where there was no place for me to write my notes. The card may be beautiful, with glossy roses and swirly text and stars and rainbows and all good things. But if it doesn't help me remember my particular encounter with the author, it's not serving my purpose.

A very smart author once came into a pitch and handed me a very ordinary business card together with a fancy bookmark with all her book covers on it. That impressed me right out of the starting gate. It told me she understood the difference between promoting herself to readers and interacting with other professionals. I was able to use the card to make my notes, and you better believe that one of my notes was about her pretty bookmark.

Another author handed me a somewhat fancier card with her log line pitch pre-printed on the back. This was during a pitch, and that approach made a lot of sense. But outside of a pitching environment, it might not be as effective. And the logistics are a bit confounding. How many pitch cards do you have printed? Do you still get regular cards, too, or just go with bookmarks? I don't know the answers to those questions, but perhaps Team Comments will have better insights.

Another author once handed me a postcard with her book cover and jacket copy on it, and as we were talking, she peeled a sticker off a label sheet and affixed it to the card. The label had her contact information. I thought that was clever, and I'm surprised more people don't do something like that. It let her get around the problem of whether to get different kinds of business cards printed, or whether to spend her money on promotional items or cards or both.

That said, I appreciate business cards more than bookmarks or postcards, mainly because they're easier for me to index and store. I have a plastic case for them. They're alphabetized for search purposes, though I run into problems sometimes with the whole pen name/real name thing. I'm bad with names to begin with, and it's a new fresh hell to have to remember two names for everyone. Please consider putting all your various names on your cards. This won't help me with my indexing system, but it will help me connect your names and brands to the person I met in the bar.

Another helpful thing -- put something like Author or Freelance Writer or something on your card. I keep my author cards in a separate place from all the cards for typesetters, e-book designers, web designers, freelance editors, cover artists, SEO specialists, publicists, booksellers, distributor reps, printers, and all the other non-author business types I encounter. I don't care what job title you assign yourself, though my weird personal quirk is that I tend to read "Author" as someone already published and "Writer" as someone at the beginning of their career. I don't know if this is universal, but I doubt it. And I have no idea where I absorbed that particular distinction.

So that's my take on author business cards. If you have particular questions or tips, please do post them in the comments.

Theresa

Marketing something other than your book that might help sell your book.

Here's something that'll get me to buy, really. A website that is NOT about you, not about your book, but about something I'm interested in that might be connected to your book. Give me something for free that I value (that is, not author biography, which I find counter-productive often enough... I really wish I didn't know that Ezra Pound was an anti-semite Mussolini fan).
Photos of Norman castles.
Advice on how to get stains out of the carpet.
A compendium of different methods used for time travel. Well, okay, used in books. Or that could be used for time travel.
Southern dessert recipes.
Irish toasts (original language and translated).
Funny titles for country music songs.

I mean, really, there are websites about everything. And if I'm reading your website about Scottish plaid patterns and you have an excerpt from your Scottish historical novel and a link to Amazon, I might very well buy. After all, I've already gotten something from "meeting" you, if only the knowledge that the Todd (my family) tartan is actually the Gordon tartan, and so I'm related to Lord Byron (a Gordon). So I might repay it by buying your book.

That's the premise of the book The Long Tail, which I bought after reading his free advice on his blog. Give something away, and many recipients will buy something else. (Think of how many CDs and albums you paid for -- before Kazaa, I mean :-- after hearing a song for free on the radio.)

What else has worked for writers?

Alicia

Alicia being a crank about "self-promotion"

A friend (you know who you are :) and I were just discussing how pervasive this "market your book" trend has become, and how besieged we feel by the barrage of "buy my book" emails and Facebook posts and all that.

I do understand. I mean, it's not like most publishers do much for new authors these days, if they ever did. If you don't market your book yourself, it might not get noticed. And there's so much competition, yada yada. Been there, done that.

But let's talk about the annoying come-ons. After all, it doesn't do an author any good to alienate potential readers. As a reader, what is likely to turn you off, and what is likely then to make you consider buying a book?

What turns me off:

You know what I hate. Facebook. Well, I don't like Facebook much, actually, but what I really hate is this idea of "fan". I keep getting email solicitations from some new author to become her "fan". "Betsy Brilliant wants you to become her fan!" (This alone makes me want to delete my Facebook account-- which I never check, so if you've friended me, nothing personal, but I probably won't ever respond... I don't even remember my password. :)

I know "fan" ia just the term Facebook uses, but it's creepy. I don't even know this person, and I'm supposed to be "her fan"? Like she's the Beatles? It really resonates with that icky "I want to be a celebrity!" vibe that is such a feature of our reality TV era. Hey, if your book is good, I will hear about it--- and THEN maybe I'll be interested... but actually, you're going to need even more than one good book to make me a "fan".

What works with me: Alas, authors have no control over most of this:
Good reviews from reviewers I have reason to trust.
Recommendations from friends.
A free copy mailed to me or delivered right to my hands at a conference, and I know this doesn't SELL a book. But it might sell the next one.
Good back-copy. Hate to say it, but I'm a sucker for this. I'll often buy a book because of the back-copy, even though I know all too well how little connection it might have with the actual book. What can I say. I'm easy.
Excerpts (good prose, well-punctuated :) online, especially at the point of sale (Amazon or Bn.com, for example, where I can immediately buy the book, or I'll probably forget).
Ease of purchase, like it's right in front of me at the bookstore, or there's a link to a purchase site at the review or excerpt. Also, Amazon's "One-click" has made impulse buying way too easy for me.


What Really Works (and the author does have control over this):
A really terrific book, because I'll talk about it and buy additional copies to give to friends.

So-- what annoys you, and what works for you, when it comes to soliciting you to buy a book?

Alicia

When the Going Gets Tough

I have one more point I want to make about how to manage an online presence, and then we'll move on.

Sometimes, no matter how gracious and welcoming you are, someone will say or do something that tests you somehow. These kinds of challenges can take many forms, but regardless of whether it's an unfairly brutal review or a nasty comment -- or even just reasonable dissent -- I think there are probably only three possible responses. (There may be more. If you know of other effective methods, please post them in the comments.)


Option One: Let's Be Friends

Depending on the comment itself, it might be possible to extend a hand of friendship and get past the rough moment. This might be easiest to manage when someone points out a flaw in your great work. Rather than becoming defensive, think about how you might be able to bridge the gap. It's important to appear sincere at such moments. Control your tone. Start off with a gentle expression of agreement, apology, or gratitude, such as,

Thanks for pointing that out. I never thought of it that way.

Or,

You might be right, but I sure didn't mean for it to come across this way. Sorry about any confusion.

Your instinct will be to fight. But what would you rather make, an enemy or a fan? Check your guerilla warfare skills, and rely on your team-building skills instead.


Option Two: Use Controversy to Generate Interest

Again, depending on the comment itself, you might be able to use it to generate some interest in your corner of the web. This probably works best when there is some debate or disagreement over a given subject rather than insults or snark. Make sure you continue to aim the controversy away from personalities and toward the discussion topic. You don't want this to be personal in any way. Your goal, instead, is to get people to pay attention and enter the debate.

We have an example of this right here on this blog. Last week, one of the commenters suggested that the recent industry emphasis on authors building a web presence amounted to a form of elitism. This comment was not a personal attack on me, nor on any of the commenters, and I knew it at the time. I also knew this was a somewhat controversial approach to the topic and that it might generate some discussion.

So I tweeted it. I didn't name the commenter or say anything that might seem like criticism, because that was not my goal. (Nor my desire.) Instead, I asked a neutral question:

We've been blogging about designing your web presence this week. One commenter thinks it's elitist. Do you agree?

And I included a bit.ly link to this blog. Then I tracked our hits for a few hours. We generated quite a few hits from that tweet, and saw comments from a few new folks. (Welcome!) People were able to discuss the subject further, and I hope that my openness to dissent indicated something about our willingness to hear new ideas.


Option Three: Play With It

This one comes courtesy of Nathalie Gray. Talk about a smart cookie. Last week, several behind-the-scenes discussions sprang up as a result of my posts. In the course of that, Nathalie told me a story I never would have heard otherwise because it involved a book she published with another house. I instantly asked her permission to share her story here. It's that good.

So here's how it goes. I'm sure you're all aware that some reviewers are known for unleashing their savage wit -- emphasis on savage -- during reviews. These reviews can be very entertaining if you're not the author. Which is probably why those reviews are so popular. Sheer entertainment value.

One of these reviewers took on one of Nathalie's books. She didn't give it a scathing review -- Nathalie's too good for that kind of treatment -- but she did make a few rough comments and a few jokes at the book's expense. So what's an author to do?

In Nathalie's own words,

I whipped that cream like mad and made a nice dessert. Encouraged readers to offer worse critique than [the reviewer], using all kinds of imaginative words. The most offending critiquer was to win the book in question. What a blast that was! [The reviewer] e-mailed me later to say how refreshing it was to have an author not act like a "snot-nosed baby". She has a way with words, that woman.

Talk about flipping a frown upside-down. Instead of taking offense or challenging the reviewer, Nathalie found a way to work it to her advantage. Her contest generated good buzz and goodwill, and you can't beat that.

(Go check out Nat's books here. You won't regret it. Her newest release, Agent Provocateur, is urban fantasy, but the others are scifi erotic romance.)


So, those are my three strategies. Got any to add to that list?
Theresa

Refining the Plan

Okay, so now you have the basics. You've figured out the form your web presence will take (e-newsletter, blog, etc.), and you've picked your brand keywords and have started to design your graphics with those in mind.

What is next?

The hard part. So far, it's been a lot of fun, but now is when we must make some judgment calls. And those aren't always easy.

We've talked some this week about how to avoid pissing people off online. That's such a fundamental, basic, no-brainer starting point that it sometimes surprises me we have to remind people of this at all. Except maybe it's not such a surprise. People are diverse and moody creatures. Even the best of us have bad days. If you're having a bad day, take a deep breath, eat some chocolate, and remind yourself that your mood will pass but your internet writings will linger indefinitely. It's the nature of the beast.

What if you're having a great day, but someone attacks you? Or says something stupid? Or somehow punches your buttons?

Step back from it. They're the ones having the bad day. Not you. It says more about them than about you. Always take the high road -- not just because the view is better from up there, but because it's a better defensive position. If you are always gracious, charming, thoughtful, and kind, then people will be shocked (and rightly so) that anyone would want to come after you. In the end, the mean people will only look meaner, and the mud they sling at you will miss by a wide margin.

If you slip up and get into a public argument or post something you regret -- and it happens to all of us at one time or another -- get out of it as graciously and as quickly as you can.

So. Where are we on our guidelines? Don't insult people. Don't pick fights. If someone picks a fight with you, be gracious and forgiving. If you slip up, be a bigger person and admit to it. Remember that there's more at stake than winning a point against an opponent. Your public image is on the line.

But these are easy things, right? What about decisions that don't hinge on ugly behavior?

This is where your keywords can help you. Let's say, for example, that you write crime novels and your keywords are chilling, taut, and emotional. You've designed a blog and website with lots of icy colors (silver, white, ice blue, a bit of black or blood red) and sharp-edged graphics. You're going to do monthly articles on forensics, including interviews with people who work in criminal investigations. You might also post some true crime files.

In this case, should you ever post pictures of your kids on your blog?

Your quickest response might be a firm no. But pause and consider. Do your children's activities ever fit in with your theme? Halloween costumes. Science projects. Book reports on mystery novels. Any of these things might support your theme and allow you to incorporate material that might not otherwise fit your plans. The point is to be selective, and to select material that works.

Let's try another example. Actually, we'll do two again because that seems to spark some good discussion in the comments and helps you really pull the taffy.

Option One:
You write warm, sunny women's fiction with mostly happy families and low-conflict plots. Your keywords are supportive, warm, and nurturing. In real life, your next-door neighbor's house was broken into in the middle of the day. Your neighbor was raped and slaughtered. It's a sensational crime, and it leaves you terrified. Can you write about this in your monthly newsletter? If so, how do you approach it?

Option Two:
You write young adult and middle grade novels. Your keywords are funky, playful, and giggly. Your website has lots of games and puzzles and riddles. You're taking an extended vacation at a nudist colony for swingers. Can you post information about this on your website? If so, how?

Have fun!
Theresa

But What About Personality?

So let's say you've decided on a way to focus your web presence. You've joined a group blog and are planning on incorporating some of your research material into your website and quarterly newsletter. What is next?

These points of contact between you and your potential readers are only the starting place. Next, you might give some thought to how you will present yourself through those channels.

If you're not sure how to do this, try this. Ask your critiquing partners to give you three adjectives to describe your manuscripts. Are they thoughtful or funny? Moody or upbeat? Dark or light?

The answers can help you find the right tone for your online presence. Chances are, your books take on a certain tone that's consistent with your native personality, so this won't be too hard to do. But thoughtful, sober people can sometimes turn out to be incredibly clever and funny on paper. The point is not to pinpoint your personality, but your book's personality.

This will also be part of your author brand, so it's good to understand this even if you end up not using it in your PR. (Why wouldn't you use this in your PR, you ask? What if you write ultracreepy, ultragory horror novels? You might not want your readers to think you're equally creepy in person. There's a difference between a serial killer and the person who studies serial killers.)

Why ask your writing partners? Why not just figure it out for yourself? Because you might not have a perfectly accurate handle on how your work is coming across. Getting an independent (but skilled) observer to reflect it back to you might enlighten you as to what you're actually accomplishing on the page. And it might lead you to shift your PR efforts in some subtle but important ways. For example, what you think is uproariously funny might be clever and witty (more cerebral, that is) to others. By all means, continue to laugh at your jokes, but think about the difference in tone when you're choosing graphics. Avoid cartoonish or clownish graphics -- which might work very well for another writer -- and try for something that captures the tone of how people will respond to your books.

Now that you have your three key words for your brand personality, the next step is figuring out how to translate that into a web presence. So, in the comments, let's play with an example. I'll give you two to choose from.

Option A
Your books are witty, intricate, and charming.

Option B
Your books are edgy, compelling, and tense.

For these options, consider the following questions.
- What color scheme would work well for the website?
- What kind of extras or add-ons might work on such a website?
- Are there any experts who might make for good guest bloggers there? Any to avoid?
- How do the adjectives influence your choice in graphics?

I can't wait to hear what you come up with.

Theresa

Defining Your Public Persona

Yesterday's little vent-fest gave rise to some interesting comments, both in the comment thread and in my email. So much food for thought, but what surprised me most was how many of you confessed to not being sure you could control your public image. There's a lot of concern out there about how to avoid making mistakes, and, to my surprise given the folks who hang around here, being interesting enough to get any attention at all in a saturated marketplace.

So let's turn yesterday's negative into a positive and talk about ways you might define and control your public persona when it comes to blogging or other similar forms of PR.

Let me start by saying that nobody is suggesting anyone should pull a Clark Kent. You don't need to be two different people. You don't need to keep your writing life secret as if you were a serial killer hiding bodies instead of manuscripts.

What we're really talking about is focusing your public image in a way that will be helpful to your audience.

Have you given any thought to this? Or have you assumed that whatever your personality might be, this is the personality you will display online? There is an argument in favor of the natural approach. You can access any thoughts or events from your life for a blog post, magazine article, or newsletter piece -- and more raw material means more finished material. You won't be pretending or hiding anything at all, not even a little bit, so slip-ups and gaffes might be fewer.

But the downside is that most of us have personalities and interests so diverse that any blog or interview or other PR efforts might lack focus if they are allowed to be as broad as we are. Focus helps to build audience. Like-minded people congregate around shared interests. This is my editing blog. I also have a knitting blog, which few of you would be interested in. Does this make me schizophrenic? No. It just means that I have focused my content around a theme for each blog.

For non-fiction authors, this process of focusing comes naturally. If you write cookbooks, articles about woodworking, business reports, or the like, you can easily focus any public discourse around your chosen subject.

But it's a little trickier for fiction writers. Our topic doesn't control our content, either for books or for any PR associated with them. So how should we design a blog and similar material to keep it focused and entertaining?

There are a couple of different approaches I've noticed fiction writers using. Keep in mind, I'm not in the PR business, but I have picked up a few things over the years, so ponder this but don't take it as the final authority. And please, share your ideas in the comments. Discussion can only help. But these are some strategies I've seen others use with some good results.

Use Your Research

Some authors write books that require a lot of research, and they use their blogs as a place to discuss things they've discovered along the way. They write magazine articles on their research topic. They post scads of links to research sites on their own website. They craft themselves into experts on a topic, and people who are interested in that topic might also be interested in novels featuring that material. This is probably an effective way to reach new readers. Anyone see any downsides to it?

Use Your Hobbies

Hobbies can be a bit tricky because you might lose interest in them over time. But if you've been an avid scrapbooker, gardener, pastry chef, etc., for five or more years, you're probably safely out of "trend" territory and into "enthusiast." Talk about your hobby on your blog, and reach the people who share this hobby. Let them know you write books, and they might just become fans. Hobby enthusiasts do tend to support one another. God knows I've bought a lot of novels over the years for no better reason than that they were penned by a knitta.

Use Publishing

I see lots of writers who blog on writing and publishing. This is an easy avenue for many writers, but there are two downsides. First, your audience will be other writers, and because they already follow publishing new releases, they may already know about you. You'll possibly reach some new readers, but not as many as you might through other channels. On the other hand, writers are great proselytizers for other writers. I know that friends and family are always asking me to recommend new books to them, and it's mainly because they figure I'll know where the good stuff is hidden.

The second downside? If you're trying to break in with a new house or agency, your target people might read your blog or newsletter for a sense of what kind of person you are. Sniping, disclosure of confidential information, and a poor understanding of the business side of the business can all be marks against you. The flipside of that, of course, is that good material can tilt the scales in your favor. We all want to work with people who are smart and upbeat, right?

Group Blogs

Nothing like a good group blog to take the pressure off a single writer but still net you some positive exposure. Most group blogs are focused on book promotion with a dash of writing/publishing information, usually anecdotal but sometimes informational. Readership for these blogs and websites may be keyed to the popularity of the authors on them, but having even one star in a group will shine more light on all the other members, too. If everyone in the group is new(ish) to publishing, getting guest posts from big names might build readership.

When you're in a group, your individual persona is probably less an issue than it is when you stand alone. So you might gain the freedom to reveal several different facets of your personality instead of focusing on just one. But perhaps those of you in groups can offer some insight on this. How do you decide what kind of content can go on a group blog?

Get Personal

A smallish number of people use their blogs to reveal the person behind the novels. They blog about their kids, family traditions, dates, wardrobes, dieting efforts, sex scene "research" -- all manner of personal content. In that case, a little common sense can be a good thing. It's one thing to say, "My family always attends Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve." It's quite another to say, "And so should you, you filthy heathens."

Here's a question for all of you. Do you find these kinds of blogs interesting? Or are they interesting only if you already know the person behind the blog? How many baby pictures before a blog gets boring?

Theresa

Managing Your Public Personality

There's a moderately well-known writer whose books I've always enjoyed. I'm not going to name her for reasons which will be apparent soon. We'll just call her the author.

I first read the author's work about five or six years ago completely by accident after stumbling across one of her titles at the library book sale. Good book. Not dazzling, but good enough that when I went to the bookstore, I picked up a couple more of her titles and read those. Also good. And she seemed to be getting better. I started to sense she was a writer on the upswing.

So I visited her website out of curiosity one day, and it was very pleasant and informative. Well-designed, good content, regular updates, all the things we like in a website. It detailed some of her involvement in the writing community, which was how I discovered she and I knew some people in common. Not too surprising. Publishing is a small world.

I reached out to her on one of the social sites. We emailed a couple of times. Nothing major, just networking stuff. Through it all, I formed a positive opinion of her. She seemed professional, upbeat, and generally good at author relations.

But then a funny thing happened.

She stepped outside of her author persona and started getting personal and controversial. She started sending around mass links with political rants, religious diatribes, and even, I'm sorry to tell you, veiled racist remarks. At first I just ignored her rants, but when she started with the racist stuff, I started to pay more attention. Was it a fluke? Had she sent it by accident? No. She sent more, and yet more. She was doing it on purpose.

And she was doing it in public. And that is the sin I can't forgive. The political rants, I mostly laughed at. The religious stuff I deleted without reading. The other stuff had me steaming mad and changed forever my opinion of the author, but after I cooled off, I realized that there was a bigger crime.

You see, I can talk to her about her opinions and show her where we disagree. I can even, if I'm lucky, get through to her and open her mind a bit. But what I can't do -- what nobody can do -- is take back what she already put out there. It's on the interwebz. www.hauntsyouforever.com. She can change, but her public words can't. Any fan might be able to stumble upon it at any time.

Yes, we all have a First Amendment right of freedom of expression. There are limits on this right, though. Some are legal (such as the rules limiting access to pornography), and some are common sense. Common sense ought to tell an author, a person on public display, that she stands to alienate a certain percentage of the public when she delves into politics and religion. Common sense ought to tell her not to flaunt her controversial opinions in a public forum because at least some of her readers will take offense.

Common sense ought to tell her that, with so many books to choose from, a reader who used to like and support her might just stop buying her new releases. She might, in fact, decide to move this author's books from the keeper shelf to the trash.

Garbage day is tomorrow around here. Not soon enough.

Theresa

Nota bene

If you are going to diss someone you work with in publishing, do it on the phone to a friend. And assume the friend is going to pass it on. Maybe the friend won't, but just assume he/she will. If you have been smart enough to do your dissing on the phone, you can always deny it.

But if you posted it on your Facebook, in your Livejournal, or on your blog, or sent it in email even to a trusted friend, or posted it on a theoretically private list, you won't be able to deny it when dissee gets a forward.

I know that none of you do this... so good! You're smarter than many writers out there who ought to be aware of the damage they're doing to their careers.

Nothing is private on the internet.
Alicia who was just reading comments on someone else's blog... eek.

More on Author Branding for Fiction Writers

In the comments to the post about Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and her brilliant branding, Josephine Damian asks:

Any advice for thriller writers? What sort of gimmick can we use?

Again with the warning that I'm no PR expert, let's take a closer look at ways that fiction authors of any genre might develop a persona or brand. To do this, because branding is so fact-sensitive, let's start with two imaginary thriller writers.

Author One has written a traditional crime thriller with a detective hero in an urban setting. There's a killer on the loose. The detective hero must stop the killer before he kills again. To flesh out the (potentially recurring) detective's character a bit, the author has decided to make him someone who cultivates orchids in his spare time. This hobby is difficult and demanding, but can be rewarding. There's a lot of science and lore associated with orchids which aides the detective in thinking through various problems.

Author Two has written a biomedical thriller about a doomsday virus on the loose in a remote desert area. The hero is a medical forensics expert, and the author does not intend to use this character in future books. The author has already started plotting a second book, which is about a tyrannical government attempting to exterminate a remote tribe as a way of ending border wars with that tribe.

So what does each author do?

We might be tempted to advise Author One to draw on the orchid thing for branding. If the orchid-loving detective will appear in several books, this might be a good option if the series takes off. The inherent problem, though, is that the orchids are part of the detective's branding. Not part of the author's branding. What will happen if Author One creates a strong website with orchid lore and cultivation techniques, and the series fizzles after three books? Must the next book's new lead character have something to do with orchids, or must the author begin a new brand?

Perhaps it might be wiser to think about the themes underlying the orchids. Precision. A difficult task. Some might call it an eccentric hobby. It's certainly something that requires a lot of study and scientific knowledge. The results can be exquisite, but fleeting.

By digging into these underlying themes, we might come to understand that Author One values tasks that require concentration, diligence, and specialized knowledge. It's not "orchids = interesting hero." It's "orchids = detail-oriented, science-inclined, intellectually curious hero = interesting hero." And if those are the qualities that make the orchid detective a good hero, then the next hero can be similarly interesting, whether he is a home brewer or a medical student.

And they're the same qualities that Author One can highlight in author branding. Maybe Author One can take a pen name that resonates with "Renaissance Man" qualities (Raleigh, Luther), or which pays tribute to an important amateur scientist (Newton, Franklin). Author One's web page can look precise and clean, with occasional flourishes -- symbolic petals on a wet black bough. (Poor Ezra deserves better treatment from the likes of me.) Maybe Author One's blog can report on interesting developments in the world of science, especially focusing on the accomplishments of amateurs or nontraditional researchers.

Two Questions for You to Ponder:

What else can Author One do to tap into those qualities of intellectual curiosity, precision, science, and absorption with a somewhat esoteric hobby?

How can you apply these same techniques to Author Two's branding?

The Power of Author Branding

I know very little about the inner mechanics of literary publicity, but I know enough to recognize when it's being done well. Last week provided an excellent example of author branding taken to an extreme level, and yielding awe-inspiring results. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee came to town, and around four hundred people turned up for her book signing.

You read that right. Four hundred people. I recognize that a number that large requires evidence, so here are a couple of snapshots of the crowd which I took about thirty minutes before the author arrived.
























Do you know who Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is? Have you ever heard of her before this moment? Have you noticed her name atop the Times list, the USA Today list, the PW list? If you haven't, it's because you're probably not part of her target demographic. If you have, I can just about guarantee one thing: you knit.

Three years ago, Andrews McNeel released Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's first book. It was called Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter and it was a knitting book unlike any other knitting book. No patterns. No charts or diagrams. No tips or techniques to make your nupps clean and your cables tight. Instead, it was a book of humorous essays about knitting. And it took the hobbyists' world by storm.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has done several things brilliantly to build her brand and her sales. Let's look at what she did, and maybe think of how it might translate to your personal brand.

Step One: Create a Memorable Brand Name, Then Leverage the Crap Out Of It.

Stephanie's first book and author blog both bear the brand name "Yarn Harlot," and in the beginning, both books and blog hit hard on her core theme: excessive and sometimes irrational love of all knitty things. Especially yarn. Any yarn. (Harlot, get it?) It's a clever, memorable name, and she leveraged it to the hilt. Half the first book plays on this "extreme love of yarn" theme. She has essays on everything from how to hide yarn in your house so nobody will know it's there (pianos and sofa cushions figure prominently), to the difference between a knitter and a Capital-K Knitter, to an essay about her ongoing war with a renegade squirrel who steals freshly laundered fleeces from her backyard. Every word builds on her image and brand.

Step Two: Connect to Readers Online With Readily Available Methods.

"But I already have a blog," you say. Okay. Good. That's a good start. Now, how are you using your blog?

Each of Stephanie's blog posts racks up several hundred comments, and when you post, you must provide an email address. And guess what? Sometimes, she emails you a response to your post. This is always a cause for shocked excitement in my area knitting circles. People love it when their fan mail gets an answer, and really, how long does it take to send out a one or two line email to a fan? This is something above and beyond responding in the comment thread, which is also a good idea.

Stephanie also occasionally reads the blogs of her commenters, and leaves comments of her own. How long does it take to post a comment to the blog of one of your readers? It doesn't have to be an every time thing. Once in a while will do. Just remember that the blogging community is a two-way street, and take a few moments to travel their way once in a while. They'll love you for it.

Step Three: Connect the Audience Back to the Author.

Stephanie also reaches her core audience in person. Initially, she toured yarn shops and bookstores to promote her book. It didn't take long for her to outgrow little shops, and as you see, now she fills ballrooms.

What fascinates me is the way these tours also provide her with blog fodder and essay material. She gets to talk about the bookstore managers who have no idea what they're in for, and I love her story about the store that set out ten chairs for one of her signings. She paced the stockroom and pleaded with the manager to get more chairs. "Don't you understand? THE KNITTERS ARE COMING!" (This ties into one of her secondary themes, that non-knitters just don't "get" knitters.)

And she gets to talk about the wonderful things knitters make while she speaks, and the cool shops she visits, and of course, all the new yarns she gets to fondle and hoard in the course of a book tour. Really, the audience is providing part of her message every time she goes out. She goes, she sees, she writes about it all. And who doesn't like to read about themselves?

At her booksignings, she speaks for about an hour (reading a prepared humorous speech on her topic). Then she takes Q&A. Then she signs books, and that is where she shines. She spends a minute or two with each reader, asking them what they've knit, how far they came to see her, and the like. She keeps her camera handy and posts pictures of attendees on her blog with various notes. (Check out her blog and you'll see what I mean. The June 22 post is about the signing I attended. I know half the people in those pictures, and they've been squeeing ever since the blog post went up.)

Step Four: Develop Some Shtick

Shtick? Yeah, baby, she's got it. There's an old knitting legend that says if an expert knitter places knitting needles in an infant's hand, that infant will develop a love of knitting. So knitters bring their infants, and Stephanie photographs them and hands them needles and carries on about how wonderful babies are. That's her first thing.

Tying into that, she will look for the youngest knitter at the signing and post a picture on her blog. If several young knitters show up, they usually all make it onto the blog, because hey, they're kids, and it's fun, and it lets her put the focus back on her audience for a bit. She will also post pictures of senior knitters, knitters who traveled long distances to see her, knitters who bring her gifts, and so on.

At some point, probably in connection with an essay about packing knitting to go on the road (which is harder than you might guess), she started The Travelling Sock thing. For each tour, she knits one pair of socks. She deliberates over yarn and patterns (more blog fodder), and then she photographs the sock everywhere she goes. She talks cab drivers, yarn store owners, waiters, tour guides -- everyone she encounters, just about -- into posing with her sock. And she starts every signing by taking a picture of the sock with the crowd, like so:






















And she makes people hold the sock for posed pictures with the author, like so:




















(Author on the left; Tricia Kennedy of Nana's Knitting Shop, which sponsored the signing, on the right.)

Other shtick has evolved as her brand has evolved. I won't go into further detail except to explain that most of what she does connects directly to her central theme (yarn harlotry) or to one of her secondary themes (knitters as a social phenomenon, inexplicable knitter behavior, knitter/non-knitter encounters, and the like).

Step Five: And This Is Relevant to Fiction Writers How?

What are the take-aways? I think the big one is to make it about your audience instead of about you. I'm sure you've all heard the advice, "Be very careful in public, because you're always in danger of alienating a reader." But guess what? When you're talking about the reader in a positive way, that danger evaporates.

Second, identify your core themes and messages, and yes, you do have them. Get past the trite or universal. "Love Conquers All" might be a truth universally acknowledged in romance land, but go deeper. Find the personal truths that compel you to write. For example, what precisely does love conquer? And how does it go about making that conquest? And why?

Once you've identified your themes, you're in position to build your brand. If your theme is about how love can make an ordinary day feel bright, then you might want to take a girl-next-door pen name and write sweet, homespun contemporaries. If your theme is about the mystical force of love and how it brings completion to the human soul, you're probably not going to write wisecracking romantic comedies.

How else can you apply the techniques we've discussed here?

Theresa

Don’t Be This Guy

A friend of mine, a successful, multi-published writer, is being harassed on her blog by this guy who came out of nowhere. He posts nasty comments accusing her of all manner of literary crimes. He simultaneously complains about the poor quality of her books and brags about his refusal to read anything like what she writes. He’s trying to shame her by saying awful things about everything from her writing process to her commercial success. It’s ugly, and it’s the kind of thing that would make industry professionals vow never to work with this guy.

Now, he tries to position himself as a literary writer when he’s ranting in her comment zone. And he posts a link back to his own blog, which I checked just out of curiosity. Turns out, he’s not writing literary novels, but genre novels of a type and style that have a small but dedicated readership. So that’s an automatic strike against him. He either doesn’t even know what he’s writing, or he's being dishonest about where his work fits into the publishing spectrum. (I want to make clear that I have not, nor do I intend to, read this guy’s work. None of this is meant to be a comment on his writing talent, which may or may not exist.)

In any event, his rants betray a deeply flawed understanding of the way people buy books, the way this industry operates. He seems to blame her for the fact that his brilliant masterwork was summarily rejected without comment by dozens of industry professionals. No, not “seems to.” Outright accuses her of interfering with his publishing career. Apparently, her success led directly to his failure. He has theories about how this works, which I will not bother to relate simply because they are all 100% wrong.

One writer’s success never leads to another’s failure. Never. In fact, the reverse is true. One writer’s success can and will lead to enhanced sales for many writers, across genres and platforms. Or, as the brilliant Jenny Crusie says, “A rising tide raises all boats.”

You know how we sometimes lament our inability to accurately predicting a book’s performance in the marketplace? This isn’t because we’re all clueless dolts. This is because books don’t sell according to the same predictable models as other commodities. The rules are different.

When readers like a book, they will go back to find another book just like it. This is the “same but different” phenomenon that leads to hot trends and strong backlist sales. If a reader picks up, say, a terse noir paranormal-thriller hybrid with a strong dystopian setting, and loves the book, he will return to the bookstore for more. “More” will be defined by whichever element the reader appreciated (say, the thriller angle, or the dystopian setting, or the fact that the hero knows martial arts) which cannot be predicted until after the reader has read the book. Or, “more” will be defined as all other books written by the same author. Or, if the publisher or bookseller is able to draw parallels, “more” will be defined as a different book by a different author that may or may not contain obvious parallels to the original book.

Most other products are defined and marketed on the basis of product differentiation. We’re inundated with ads telling us why a particular product is different from all other products in its class. But in publishing, product differentiation doesn’t work. We need to tap into the reader’s desire for “more” in every way we can.

The other side effect of the “same but different” yen is that sometimes a reader driven by the quest for “more” ends up stepping outside the boundaries of their personal definitions of “more.” In other words, you might go into the bookstore looking for another dystopian thriller, and end up buying a cookbook. Or a literary debut. Or a sweeping historical romance. And that original desire for “more” will often be satisfied by these purchases just as if the reader had bought nothing but dystopian thrillers. Because sometimes, what starts out as “more dystopian thrillers” changes into, simply, “more reading material.” This means that a runaway bestseller like Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code can translate into increased sales for all kinds of books. A rising tide lifts all boats.

So your astonishingly inventive and original masterpiece is not doomed to failure by virtue of its originality. There may be other factors dooming it. (In this case, I suspect this guy’s sheer nastiness comes across in his proposals and makes industry professionals flee.) But originality and literary merit do not prevent a book from making it to the marketplace. They might make it harder to market with “same but different” approaches, and they might have a harder time finding an audience if its natural "more" links have failed to satisfy readers in the past. But we all know that when “more” means simply “more reading material,” almost any book in the bookstore can be sold to almost any reader. Readers read both within and across genres. Anyone who's been paying attention to my reading list on the sidebar will have seen evidence of that.

In fact, given that profits from commercial successes are often used to subsidize small literary efforts, literary writers ought to be delighted every time some commercial novel sells a bazillion copies. Those profits make it possible for publishers to take risks on books unlikely to demonstrate wide commercial appeal.

Here’s a fun fact I stumbled across recently. I can’t personally vouch for its accuracy, but I read from a reliable source that nominees for the NBCC award average sales of 800 copies per title. That’s over the life of the book. That *might* cover the expenses of producing the book. Just barely. If that. So how does a publisher manage to stay afloat after publishing a book that sells only 800 copies? By publishing a book that will sell 800,000 copies.

In other words, this guy, this nasty commenter, so busy deriding my friend for her commercial success, fails to grasp that a) his “literary” book might just sell a few extra copies to browsers who liked my friend’s books enough to return to the bookstore for more, and b) my friend’s success makes it possible for publishers to take risks on inventive books whose sales and critical success might be hard to predict under existing models.

I get a little tired of the constant division between writers of various genres. It’s not just a one-sided problem. It crops up everywhere. Even a recent issue of a literary and publishing review called erotic romance “trashy” in an article praising -- get this -- a set of graphic novels. Is that the level we’ve fallen to? Are we seriously contending now that a graphic novel is somehow less “trashy” than a graphic romance? This is absurd enough to be shocking, I think.

That’s not an invitation for you all to tell me why graphic novels are awesome. I’m sure they are, and more power to anyone writing them. My problem is in all these false distinctions of merit we assign to various slices of a single pie. All the slices have merit, each in its own way. Graphic novels have no more or less inherent value than spy novels, poetry volumes, or any other kind of book. And as soon as we start comparing all these different slices -- if we say that one genre is better or worse than the other -- then we have to do it within the context of the entire publishing pie, which, as we've seen, is absolutely not a zero-sum game.

This is also not an invitation to bash literary writers. The truth is that these folks are at the vanguard of new techniques which we can all adapt and profit by. Commercial writers can respect literary writers for this, and literary writers can respect commercial writers for getting readers into bookstores, and we can somehow find ways to muddle along together without all the sniping. Right?

A rising tide raises all boats. Or, in other words, celebrate the successes of all writers, because they might just make your own success more possible.

Theresa